Larry Caplan, Vanderburgh County Extension Horticulture Educator
I knew this warm spell of the past week was going to be a problem. Sometimes, I hate to be right.
Temperatures in the 50s and 60s have caused a lot of bulbs, perennials, and flowering plants to begin to emerge from the soil and bud out. In my garden, I’ve got crocus and daffodil in bloom. The buds on my lilacs are swelling; I’ve had reports of bud swell on peaches and other fruit trees, especially closer to the Ohio River.
According to the Weather Channel website (http://www.weather.com/weather/ ), our overnight temperatures will be dropping below freezing this week. According to the 10 day forecast for Evansville, we can expect overnight temperatures in the 20s starting Wednesday night, and continuing through Sunday night. The most recent prediction on this site is for a low of 20 degrees on Friday night.
Temperatures this low are going to cause damage to any exposed leaves and blooms. Expect to see daffodil foliage killed back to the ground, along with any other perennial plants that started to sprout. Fortunately, the soil is pretty warm, so the bulbs and perennials themselves shouldn’t be killed: they will sprout back out again, and may even bloom this spring.
Shrubs like azalea, lilac, and shadblow are in a very sensitive stage of development, as are crabapples, peaches, and ornamental cherries. As long as the buds haven’t opened, or at least, not show more than a little bit of a green tip, I expect that freeze damage to the blooms will be minor. If peaches, which are probably the most sensitive of our fruit crops, are still in the swollen bud stage, then a temperature of 18 degrees will only kill about 10% of the blooms…hardly noticeable. But if the peach flowers are showing any pink, then the same 18 degree low will wipe out 90% of the blooms.
Strawberries may be badly hurt. It never really got cold this winter, so the plants never really got into full dormancy. Check your garden: if you see any new green leaves, or (worse yet) any blooms, then a drop in temperature below 28 degrees is going to devastate them. If you still have your straw, plan on covering the plants deeply late afternoon, before the temperature drops. Remove the straw in the morning, after the temperature gets above freezing. Looking at the forecast, we’ll be doing this all week.
I’ve seen roses actually leafing out already. Roses produce their flower buds on new growth, so if some of the new shoots get frozen, the plant will simply sprout some more shoots and go on to bloom later in the season. However, a drop to 20 degrees, as predicted, could do more than blast some leaves and shoots: large portions of the plant could be killed back. It is most important to protect the graft union (a swollen section on the lower trunk, where your pretty rose branches, the scion, are grafted onto a root stock). If the graft union is damaged, then the plant will sprout from the roots, giving you a poor quality “wild rose”, which will look nothing like the plant you bought. Mound the base of the plant with wood chips, shredded leaves, or straw to a depth of 18 - 24 inches.
I don’t think you’ll need to cover your shrubs with sheets, but if you do, be sure to use a cloth sheet, and not a plastic tarp. Heat leaches right through the plastic, and any foliage touching it will be frosted. Don’t lay the sheet over your daffodils – you’ll wind up breaking the stems off. The sheets will only protect your plants down to a temperature of 25 to 26 degrees; much below that, and you may still get injury. If the sheet hangs all the way down to the warm ground, you may be able to withstand a colder overnight temperature as all the warm air is kept around the plant.
BTW: Please DO NOT refer to the cold snap this week as a “late frost.” Our average last frost of the year is the first or second week of April for the southwestern corner of Indiana. It’s SUPPOSED to be this cold!
Good luck!
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Corn Market Remains Unsettled
The 2011-12 corn marketing year is approaching the half-way
point. At this time of year, prospects for marketing year consumption and
ending stocks are often fairly clear and the market begins to focus more on new
crop prospects.
This year, consumption, stocks, and price prospects are far
from clear. There is considerable uncertainty about the pace of consumption for
the rest of year in each of the major categories. If anything, the uncertainty
outlined two weeks ago has intensified. The surprisingly small estimates of
feed and residual use during the last half of the 2010-11 and first quarter of
the 2011-12 marketing years had created expectations of a “correction” to be
revealed in upcoming USDA Grain Stocks reports. Now, the on-going
year-over-year decline in broiler production, prospects for fewer numbers of
cattle on feed later in the year, and the relatively mild winter weather to date
point to some slowdown in feed use, whatever the pace actually is. <Read More>
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